The two-decade legal and religious war between Lonna Ralbag and her ex-husband, Israel Meir (“Meir”) Kin, is usually served to the public as a tidy moral fable. It is such a strong social reality narrative that if you even dare to poke a finger at it, the formerly peaceful waters of the community turn dark and thrashing.
Apparently, you can tell Jewish girls to bare it all on social media, sleep around on their husbands and intermarry, but you absolutely cannot challenge the facts of this case IN THE ORTHODOX COMMUNITY.
Fascinating.
In the mainstream media and the dominant Orthodox echo chamber alike, Lonna is cast as the ultimate agunah—a “chained woman” held hostage by a cruel, recalcitrant husband, Meir.
But a deep dive into one formal civil pleading filed in the Supreme Court of New York, Rockland County (Index No. 030022/2023), alongside the subsequent judicial ruling, exposes a radically different reality.
This is not a story about a woman who was denied a divorce.
It is a story about a father whose two-year-old was exposed to the pornography on his new wife’s computer, and how he was afraid her other children, potentially “experimenting” with one another, would sexually assault the toddler.
For that, and because the wife’s computer would have been examined by the court, Meir Kin was cast as a monster.
(Please know that I have no desire to attack the rights of women, or to hold up bully boys for admiration. My only desire is to find the truth, and I am shocked and disgusted at where this sordid tale led me. I actually have my Ph.D. in sociology, with a dissertation on feminist theory.)
Based on my own education, experience, and observation, the Lonna Kin offers a masterclass in how effectively the “victim narrative” can be used to project one’s own guilt onto the so-called oppressor.
It is a cautionary tale of how a powerful, well-connected rabbinic elite can strip a man of a fair shake, target his innocent extended family, and then invoke the “public interest” as a legal shield to escape the civil consequences of defamation.
Yes, Lonna came up with the “Get refuser” label solely to escape scrutiny. This was in fact the core of her legal defense to the complaint — that she was entitled to her opinion BECAUSE THE GET REFUSER ISSUE IS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST.
To understand how completely the truth was inverted, one must look at who actually initiated the breakdown of the marriage.
According to the formal civil complaint referenced here, it was Israel (Meir) Kin—not Lonna Ralbag Kin—who first sought a legal remedy to dissolve the household. Not the act of a man who refuses divorce.
The marriage allegedly unraveled in 2004, when Israel discovered that pornographic materials were being viewed by Lonna’s children from a prior marriage.
Compounding this discovery was a deeply disturbing belief that inter-sibling intimacy was occurring among those same children.
Fearing directly for the physical and psychological safety of his then two-year-old biological son, Israel decided to end the marriage for his sake.
Upon hearing of this, Lonna preemptively commenced a divorce action in the Rockland County, NY Supreme Court.
However, the integrity of her legal track completely collapsed during discovery.
The court instructed Lonna to produce her computer to investigate the pornography allegations.
When the computer was finally turned over for forensic inspection, the hard drive had been (illicitly) erased while under her sole ownership and control.
Caught in a act of severe misconduct involving the destruction of evidence, Lonna voluntarily discontinued her own Rockland County divorce action.
The civil divorce was later finalized in California.
Lonna had to find some way to make this bad situation look good. Accordingly, we have the “Get refuser” narrative.
There was only one problem. The historical and rabbinic record show that Kin gave his wife a Gett eighteen years ago, the same year as the civil divorce was finalized. Again, not the act of a man who is keeping his wife in chains.
On March 10, 2008, Israel Kin deposited the Get in Beis Din Shaarei Mishpat.
He repeatedly notified Lonna that the Gett was ready and waiting; all she had to do was walk in and collect it.
Yet mainstream activists and institutional rabbis aggressively promoted a narrative that Israel was conditioning the Gett on a $500,000 extortion payment and the total surrender of child custody.
Israel vociferously branded this “fake news.” I can’t find any record of it.
What I do see in the official correspondence from the Beis Din itself is that the divorce had no monetary or custodial strings attached at all.
Instead, the court asked Lonna for only the most basic decency:
– Arrange for all seiruvim (contempt orders) against Israel to be unconditionally voided.
– Ensure Meir was allowed back into all synagogues (shuls) with full communal privileges.
– Unconditionally remove all forms of public shaming across publications, videos, blogs, and social media.
Under strict halachic definitions, a Get-refuser is a man who refuses to sever the marital bond. A man who went through the agonizing physical and religious process of creating a Gett and left it open for collection cannot logically be placed in that category.
As the letter implied, the only roadblock keeping Lonna “chained” was her stubborn refusal to halt the public smear campaign.
Remember: She couldn’t do it. To admit otherwise would be to open the door to her own public shame and embarrassment.
But, you say, the Get was validly executed. Why would she refuse to pick it up?
Because doing so would not only destroy her self-created narrative, but it would also mean acknowledging a so-called “rogue” rabbinical court when she comes from the highly influential Ralbag family.
Some argue that the Beis Din is invalid. But there again, the facts simply don’t hold.
In the United States, there is no statutory “Chief Rabbinate” holding a monopoly on Jewish divorce; a Beis Din functions essentially as a private arbitration panel.
Litigants have a foundational right under Jewish law (Choshen Mishpat) to choose an objective, untainted forum.
Israel Kin knew that walking into a mainstream establishment court meant facing an echo chamber inherently biased toward the Ralbag family.
More than that, the mainstream rabbinic establishment lined up behind Lonna and acted in true mafia style to crush the independent Beis Din. The same Rabbi Mordechai Willig who gave a pass to Boruch Lanner and who issued a baseless Seruv to Raphi Stein was right there to pile on.
The strategy was absolute institutional warfare, both at home and abroad.
The official public decrees issued by the mainstream establishment—such as the October 2009 “Proclamation for the Release of Agunot”—specifically targeted and blacklisted Rabbi Abraham Shmuel Gestetner and Rabbi Tzvi Dov Abraham, the independent heads of the Monsey Beis Din Shaarei Mishpat, explicitly to invalidate the religious forum Kin chose to deposit his divorce paperwork.
By blacklisting the independent court, the institutional rabbis ensured Meir Kin could never get a fair shake. Much like Hamas keeps the Palestinians as a brainwashed group of angry killers in Gaza, they preferred to keep Lonna technically “chained” for years rather than validate a competitor in the free market of American Orthodoxy.
Eventually, Meir utilized a Heter Meah Rabbanim (a rare dispensation signed by 100 rabbis) to remarry in 2014—an ancient halachic mechanism designed precisely to protect a husband when a wife permanently refuses to accept a validly executed Gett under the terms set by an ordained court.
Why? Because THAT IS WHAT WAS HAPPENING.
Shamefully, Rabbi David Baruch Lau — a cousin of Lonna’s — acted on her behalf to block the burial of Meir’s mother Yedda in Israel, demanding exorbitant compensation, before a Jerusalem rabbinic court intervened to permit the burial.
When Meir refused to bow down to institutional pressure, the campaign mutated into a relentless, multi-year war of attrition targeting his extended family members—his father, Izchak, and his brothers, Aaron and Dov—who had absolutely no involvement in or responsibility for Israel’s marriage.
In December 2022, the family fought back, filing a civil complaint for libel, slander, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress against Lonna Ralbag. That document lays bare the staggering cruelty of her campaign.
Allegedly, Lonna organized and encouraged aggressive, amplified protests directly in front of the Kin family home while they were sitting shiva (the 7-day mourning period), harassing arriving guests.
The harassment extended to sacred family milestones. Lonna organized raucous picket lines outside the weddings of Aaron Kin’s niece in Monsey and his nephew in Borough Park, explicitly designed to disrupt the chuppah services and publicly humiliate the extended family.
Lonna filmed these protests, uploading them to YouTube to amplify the public shaming and boost her public profile, which the plaintiffs allege she leveraged to further her career as a Rockland County realtor.
So what happened to the complaint?
On August 1, 2023, Supreme Court Justice Thomas Zugibe issued a Decision and Order granting Lonna Ralbag’s motion to dismiss the complaint in its entirety.
The ruling provides a fascinating look at how civil legal technicalities can intersect with religious disputes.
Zugibe dismissed the defamation claims on procedural grounds.
Under New York law (CPLR § 3016(a)), a plaintiff must plead the exact words used, along with the specific time, place, and audience.
Because the Kin family pled the general “substance” of the public shaming and focused on Lonna’s non-speech physical actions (the protests), the legal threshold for defamation was not met.
Furthermore, the judge noted that Lonna’s spoken attacks were directed at her ex-husband, Israel, meaning they were not technically “of and concerning” the named plaintiffs (the father and brothers).
However, the most revealing section of Justice Zugibe’s order involves Lonna’s defense strategy.
Lonna’s legal team aggressively pushed to have the lawsuit thrown out under New York’s Anti-SLAPP law (Civil Rights Law §§ 70-a, 76-a). This statute is designed to protect citizens from retaliatory lawsuits when they speak out in a public forum about matters of matters of public interest.
In other words, Lonna’s entire defense hinged on the argument that her public shaming campaign was in the public interest—asserting that her motive was to promote the broader agunah cause and fight against the systemic abuse of get-refusal.
Reading between the lines, it was clear: SHE ADMITTED THAT HER GOAL WAS TO HARASS MEIR KIN IN THE NAME OF FEMINIST SOCIAL JUSTICE.
The Judge saw right through it. While he dismissed the case on pleading defects, he explicitly rejected Lonna’s Anti-SLAPP defense. The judge ruled that the Anti-SLAPP law did not apply because this was “purely a private matter,” stating:
“While the Defendant’s story of being denied a get could have implications impacting many in her community, this case is about alleged statements made about the plaintiffs, not Defendant’s ex-husband.”
The reality of the Kin-Ralbag dispute flips the popular narrative entirely on its head.
The multi-decade standoff was not the result of a husband withholding a divorce; it was the result of institutional politics.
It is the story of a mainstream rabbinate that preferred to misuse its immense power, blacklist alternative courts, and greenlight the systemic harassment of an entire extended family rather than acknowledge a validly executed independent Gett they could not control.
Ultimately, Lonna Ralbag successfully escaped financial liability in civil court due to strict pleading technicalities. But Judge Zugibe’s ruling left a permanent mark on her narrative. By explicitly denying her Anti-SLAPP defense, the court stripped away her armor as a public interest advocate. Her campaign was exposed for what it truly was: not a holy crusade for the agunah cause, but a vindictive, purely private campaign of harassment against an innocent family.
Sources:
Kin, A., Kin, I., & Kin, D. v. Ralbag, L. (2022). Summons and verified complaint. Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Rockland. Index No. 030022/2023, NYSCEF Doc. No. 1.
Kin, A., Kin, I., & Kin, D. v. Ralbag, L. (2023). Decision and order on motion to dismiss (Zugibe, J.). Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Rockland. Index No. 030022/2023, NYSCEF Doc. No. 25.
The Public Institutional Ban (Kol Korei):
Organization for the Resolution of Agunot [ORA], Rabbinical Council of America [RCA], et al. (2009). Kol Korei L’Maan Hatarat Agunot: Machaa Nemretzet Neged Shnei Rabbanim [Public Proclamation for the Release of Chained Women: Energetic Protest Against Two Rabbis]. New York, NY. (Targeting Rabbis A.S. Gestetner and T.D. Abraham of Monsey).
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel State Decrees:
Ben Dahan, E. (2008). Official correspondence regarding Rabbi Abraham Gestetner and Rabbi Hirsch Baer Abraham. State of Israel: Ministry of Rabbinical Courts (Menahel Batei HaDin). Jerusalem, Israel. (Issued May 12, 2008 / 7 Iyar 5768).
Peretz, Y. (2009). Official edict from the Office of the Rishon LeZion Chief Rabbi of Israel and President of the Great Rabbinical Court. Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Jerusalem, Israel. (Issued Nov. 26, 2009 / 9 Kislev 5770).
Shtetl. (2023). Defamation case against agunah dismissed. Shtetl News. https://www.shtetl.org/article/defamation-case-against-agunah-dismissed
Postscript:
An anonymous blog makes the following claims, which I will append to this article as being of interest.
1. Legal Manipulation and Financial Drain: Lonna filed for divorce in the NY Supreme Court in 2004, dragged out litigation for two years (costing Meir over $100,000), and then dismissed it. She also aggressively contested a “status-only” divorce filed by Meir in California, seeking an annulment instead, only to later appeal the judge’s ruling of annulment.
2. Obstruction of Rabbinical Arbitration: She obtained a civil court Gag Order that legally prevents Meir from speaking before a Bais Din (rabbinical court), making a proper Din-Torah (rabbinical trial) impossible.
3. Bad Faith Negotiations: During mediation in 2009, she remained obstinate and aggressive despite concessions offered by Meir.
4. Threats and Institutional Corruption: She allegedly enlisted an individual to make recorded threats against Meir. Furthermore, she is accused of using the political influence of her cousin, Aryeh Ralbag, to pressure the Rabbinical Council of California (RCC) into falsely listing Meir as a recalcitrant husband.
http://lonnakin.blogspot.com/2009/06/lonna-kin-ralbag-is-phony-agunah.html
Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are the author’s own. All individuals are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal 